'Finished with that?' asks Gruffle, pointing at the newspaper. As is his custom, he takes out his micro-camera, sets it on one of the chairs, then holds up the front page of the paper (with today's date showing) while activating the remote. Happy that he's got a little snapshot of his visit to Centry, he uploads the entry onto a cryptcard, dictates a few words to go with it, then stores it away ready for sending back to his folks on Grnouf.
While waiting for the Doc to finish up, he starts idly flicking through the 'paper. He points out the report about the storms to Zoe in case they end up flying through an area affected by them, has a chuckle at the story about the sheep, then begins to scan the reports about the 'crime wave'. He winces while reading the details of the murder, and makes a note to check that everything is locked up on the ship lest the petty thieves strike closer to home.
When he gets to the back page, he reads the story about the disease outbreak. As his eyes scan down the details, he begins to note the reporter's suspicions that the epidemic isn't following the usual pattern of infection. Making a mental note to tell the Doc when he comes back, he takes a pen out of his coat pocket and starts idly doodling notes in the margin.
'Spider', he says, 'can you call up some details on your 'pad please?'. He proceeds to read out the locations where the vets have picked up the infection, and asks the Zhodani to find out their latitude and longitude from online sources. Jotting these down, he also asks him to find out Centry's polar diameter and oblateness. Armed with these, after a few minutes thought, during which time he alternates between chewing the end of the pen and whistling tunelessly - which begins to draw dark looks from some of the other people in the room - the young Vargr begins to sketch on the newspaper.
Firstly, he uses the information about Centry to make a passable representation of the planet's shape. He then begins to plot the locations of the outbreak on the surface and work out the distance between them. With a little more information provided by his friend - much quicker than looking himself given his dislike of computers - he begins to do some calculations and soon is using up every spare piece of blank space on the pages, with long formulae and complex equations relating to the possible disease vectors.
Just as the Doc radios in to say that he is making progress, Gruffle carefully folds the newspaper and puts it back on the chair where Spider found it. Turning to the Zhodani, he says in a low voice 'you know, there *is* something odd about the way this disease is spreading. According to my calculations, taking into account prevailing wind and a few other factors, the probability of these sites being infected like this is pretty low'. He leans back in his chair, with a thoughtful look on his face.
[sblock=OOC]Time to get some mileage out of my Intuitive Mathemtician talent!
Math: Surveying for the plotting of the locations and Math: Statistics for the probability calculations seem appropriate?[/sblock]
(Ba-Wang!) After a few moments of searching, he does find a news station busily giving a traffic report. 
